wifi

Having made a new rep for itself with surprisingly decent portable DVD players, Polaroid is now venturing into MP3 and portable media players. In 2007, the company formerly known for its instant cameras will release three MP3 and portable media players (none of which handle AAC audio files), including one with a 4.3-inch wide touch-screen and two with Wi-Fi.

The first player, the MPA-20011 (due it March, $99.99 list price) is a 1GB model that can be expanded to up to 4GB with a micro SD card. The 20011 is slightly bigger than a Nano but sports a … Read more

Netgear announced today a dual-mode cordless Wi-Fi phone that supports both traditional landlines and Skype VoIP calling. The Netgear SPH200D Dual-Mode DECT Cordless Phone With Skype has a base unit that plugs into both your network router and a phone jack, allowing you to switch between Skype calls and traditional calls. It uses the 1.9GHz band, which should keep it clear of interference from your (or your neighbor's) wireless network. You can view your regular contacts and your Skype contacts, on the handset's screen, and when making a call to a non-Skype user, you can choose whether … Read more

Soon you'll never have to leave your car while on business out of town. Starting in March, Avis will make any one of its rentals a potential Wi-Fi hot spot using a service from a San Francisco-based start-up called Autonet Mobile.

For $10.95 a day, according to The Raw Feed, customers can rent a portable "In-Car-Router" that provides wireless high-speed Net access. The main challenge will be dropped signals, which have bedeviled other mobile access products, but Autonet told the International Herald Tribune that it has overcome that problem with a new "wireless router" … Read more

It's true: the iPhone is here--but not the one everyone's been talking about. Linksys announced today its family of Voice over IP and Wi-Fi phones, called iPhone.

The purveyor of home networking equipment has been shipping several flavors of VoIP and Wi-Fi phones since 2004 and announced two new products today, but branding them under the iPhone moniker is a new move. The two new members of the family are the iPhone Dual-Mode Internet Telephony Kit for Skype (CIT400) and the iPhone Wireless-G Phone for Skype (WIP320). The former is targeted for the home: it includes a cordless … Read more

The Wi-Fi bunny has done what rabbits do best: multiplied.

Formally known as Nabaztag--it's Armenian for 'rabbit'--the toy from French company Violet that last summer grabbed geek attention worldwide has gotten an upgrade already.

The new guy is called Nabaztag/tag, and besides reading e-mails, RSS feeds through a Wi-Fi connection to a computer, acting as an alarm clock or playing music, he can now respond to sound via a voice-recognition device in its belly. That means owners can talk to their bunny, but it also means it knows when its owner is in the room. When it … Read more

Do you remember the old-fashioned college days when a friend would call you by cell phone to let you know when "he" turned up at the library? Or maybe you figured out someone's class schedule, so you could just happen to be walking by when "she" got out. Technology, once again, is changing the game.

The Senseable City Lab at MIT released a free desktop application on Wednesday with real-time mapping and instant-messaging features. iFind, as it's called, works by detecting which Wi-Fi access point a person is near. Because MIT has over 2,… Read more

Thursday, Archos will officially announce the arrival of the 30GB 604 WiFi, the industry's first and "only wireless portable video player" (actually, Archos' own PMA430 was the first Wi-Fi-enabled PVP).

The highly sought-after digital swiss army knife is one of several A-list portable media gadgets to enter the holiday game just under the wire. Still to come: the Zune, Cowon's A3, Philips' PMC, and maybe even a video iPod.

Nearly identical to the excellent 30GB 604 (shown in photo) in form--same removable battery, same ginormous 4.3-inch widescreen, same video playback prowess--the 604 WiFi adds a … Read more

Rant against Starbucks Wi-Fi, Part II. To recap: The last time we checked, Starbucks charged $10 for a single day's Net access through a T-Mobile wireless connection. And unless you're planning to hide in the restroom all night, that probably means $10 for a few hours, not the full 24.

So a very viable alternative is to ditch Starbucks altogether and find another, friendlier coffee shop that offers free Wi-Fi. In our last episode, we offered the possibility of finding just such a caffeinated oasis via a $70 Wi-Fi detector. But now, Coolest Gadgets has found one much cheaper, … Read more

For those of you intrigued by the Microsoft Zune, the official Zune Web site is now alive and kicking.

Basically a glossy digital brochure of people having fun and looking cool (think J.Crew meets Lollapalooza), Zune.net reveals stuff that we've already seen such as: Zune photos, accessories such as the VAF Octavio speaker system, advertisements, Zune Marketplace and ZunePass PR fodder, artist profiles, and Zune "on tour" dates. The Zune hits the streets on November 14.